Apparently not – especially if Democrats take full control of the nation next year.

That much was made plain yesterday, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi kicked off her push for an emergency “economic stimulus” package.

Though what, exactly, she plans to “stimulate” – besides government debt and long-term taxpayer obligations, of course – remains unclear.

Pelosi said last week that her plan’s price tag could reach $150 billion – largely to expand government unemployment benefits and food-stamp programs.

That alone should give the lie to Barack Obama‘s pledge that everything in his vaunted economic plan is “paid for” – either in revenue savings or new taxes.

Not with free-spending allies like Pelosi on the Hill, it won’t be.

Actually, Obama was up to many of the same tricks himself yesterday, calling for massive new government spending as part of a new “middle-class rescue plan.”

Among his proposed goodies: cash payouts to states for infrastructure-rebuilding projects, expanded unemployment benefits and fast-tracked loans to the US auto industry.

“How will we pay for it?” he asked rhetorically. “You can’t ask that when we’re paying $10 billion a month to rebuild Iraq.”

Notice how that’s not an answer.

True, some of Obama’s proposals came in the form of temporary “tax cuts” – but that rings about as hollow as his oft-repeated pledge to cut taxes for “95 percent of working families.”

In truth, as The Wall Street Journal detailed yesterday, nearly all of those “cuts” actually come in the form of “refundable tax credits,” by which the government in effect writes a check to those who meet certain criteria – even if they don’t pay taxes in the first place.

In other words, Obama’s “tax cuts” really amount to a sizable expansion of welfare.

That leaves American taxpayers to foot the bill – both directly, and through the lost economic opportunity that’s sure to follow Obama’s promised tax hikes on income, dividends and capital gains.

And with Speaker Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid & Co. controlling Congress, those hikes would surely be the first of many to come.